The present invention generally relates to software and firmware control of a multifunction peripheral in a network through a server that connects to the network, and more particularly to software and firmware of a peripheral server that provides access to a plurality of functions of a multifunction peripheral in a network.
Multifunction peripherals (MFP) are becoming increasingly popular, because they provide a number of different functions such as scanning, printing, copying, and sending and receiving faxes, for example, in a single device. Until recently, an MFP had to be attached directly to a single computer to access all the services offered by the MFP. This arrangement, however, excluded other computers from accessing the MFP. When the MFP is implemented in a network through a conventional peripheral server, only the print function of the MFP is accessible by the clients, which are typically personal computers (PC). In commonly assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/164,454 filed Sep. 30, 1998 by Kumpf et al., a network peripheral server is disclosed which is capable of simultaneously accessing both the scanning function and the printing function of an MFP connected in a network. The Kumpf et al. application is incorporated by reference herein.
The peripheral server of the above Kumpf et al. invention, however, still does not allow access to any other functions of an MFP other than the print and the scan functions. An additional shortcoming of known servers is that they communicate with the attached MFP only through known I/O channels. Any MFP that utilizes different I/O channels would not work with these servers without first being updated by the user, which is inconvenient.
Accordingly, it is a primary object of the present invention to provide an improved network peripheral server which provides access to a plurality of functions supported by a multifunction peripheral connected to a network.
An additional object of the present invention is to provide an improved network peripheral server which provides access to a plurality of functions of the multifunction peripheral in addition to the print and scan functions.
A further object of the present invention is to provide an improved network peripheral server including a general purpose gateway which provides data pass-through for a plurality of functions of the multifunction peripheral, thereby eliminating the need to create a separate gateway corresponding to each accessed functions.
Another object of the present invention is to provide an improved network peripheral server which provides network access to the functions of the multifunction peripheral on any channel supported by the multifunction peripheral.